Remember, Remember
by HalfASlug
Summary: It's Bonfire Night and Hermione decides to take Ron to their local fireworks display.


_A/N: Howdy! Remember when I said I wouldn't be doing this much anymore? Ha. But this really will be the last one-shot this side of Christmas. Someone unknowingly gave me a Bonfire Night related idea and it made sense to have it written for today seeing as it is 5th November and all. _

_Hope you enjoy this and be safe tonight, guys! Pets indoors, gloves with sparklers and don't hold lit explosives near your face (or at all) and all that jazz :)_

_Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns Harry Potter but she lets me hold him for 10 mins every other Sunday, providing that I've done all my homework._

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5th November, 2005

Ron was cold. Very cold. So cold in fact that he was fairly certain that he was starting to get frost bite. He asked Hermione if his red nose was showing any signs but she just laughed as she pulled him closer to the village square. Part of him was annoyed that she wasn't taking him seriously but the rest was being slowly warmed from the inside out by the sound of her laughter. The best weapon she had against him was her happiness and he just hoped she never realised.

They had only lived here for a month or so, having finally saved up enough to move out of their horrible flat in London and into a tiny cottage on the outskirts of a small village. The rural setting brought back a lot of memories of growing up for Ron; everything from the walk down a country lane to the nearest shop to the rancid smell that came when they were downwind from the local farm was like reliving some aspect of his childhood. This, mixed with seeing Hermione fill the cottage with books, landscape paintings, weird kitchen appliances and more books, had made the past few months some of the happiest of his life.

Even though they had been married now for over five years, the change in scenery had brought about a second honeymoon phase for them. They had always been quite a physical couple, whether it be a casual hand on a thigh when they sat near each other or a less than playful slap on the arm when Hermione was annoyed, but recently they hadn't been able to keep their hands off each other. In could have had something to do with Ron wanting them to 'christen' every room in the house – something that made him eternally grateful that they had moved somewhere with three and not two bedrooms, as well as two bathrooms.

As the pair of them made their way through the crowd of villagers that had braved the biting cold to pack the square out, Ron noticed a row of stalls whose bright lights glowed in the darkness. He signalled to Hermione that he wanted to go and inspect them and she had consented, but only after she had rolled her eyes at him.

Immediately he had made a beeline for the burger van, drawn in by, not just the smell, but the heat radiating from it, only for Hermione to scold him because they had not long had dinner. No amount of pouting had made her relent so instead he ended up examining a bag of candy floss.

"You've got to be joking," Hermione said in a tone that told him that yes, he was certainly joking. Ron gave her a questioning look that she answered with another question. "Do you know how much sugar is in that?"

"You sound more like your dad every day," he teased. Still, he put the bag down and picked up a toffee apple. Hermione's face twisted into a look of abject horror but Ron wasn't about to make the mistake of letting her speak first again. "This has fruit in it, love," he said with a cheeky grin. "It's one of my five a day."

Hermione looked scandalised by his logic but let him make his purchase anyway. He was happy that he had the right change. Muggle money wasn't the mystery that it once was but Ron still felt nervous when he used it, always convinced that instead of handing over a bank note, he was in fact handing over a note saying 'Hello, Muggle. I'm a wizard.'

As he happily munched into the sticky mess he had bought, Hermione went to get them a hot drink each. Obviously she was feeling the cold too but didn't want to prove him and his whinging right.

It was a cloudless sky and full moon that covered the square as Ron leant against a lamppost. Over the top of the crowd, he could make out a small assortment of what Hermione had told him were called 'fairground rides', decked out in garish colours and blinking lights. He dragged his eyes away from odd looking drawing of a dog on the side of one of them and onto the huge fire that most people had gathered around.

Frowning slightly, he focussed on the outline of a limp doll on a stick in the middle of it all. All of the horror stories that the twins had told him when he was younger about witches being burnt at the stake came back to him and he gulped. He glanced around, hoping that none of the Muggles realised they had a wizard in their midst and reverted back to their old rituals.

"Here you go," came a voice from his right. Ron turned to see Hermione, dressed in a thick coat and knitted scarf, hat and gloves, handing him a steaming polystyrene cup. Noticing that he had already polished off his toffee apple, she gave him an exasperated shake of her head before he took the drink from her and a sipped it.

"I thought you were getting tea," he choked as he swallowed the scolding hot chocolate.

"I wanted to," Hermione said, blowing gently on her drink, "but the tea always tastes foul at these things."

Not wanting to question her knowledge of 'these things', Ron carried on drinking, hoping the burning in his throat would mix with the icicles that were his fingers and leave the rest of him in some kind of pleasant middle ground. When he had finished and chucked his cup in a nearby bin, he complained that his theory hadn't played out.

"What do you expect when forget to bring gloves?" she snapped as she finished her own drink. "For pity's sake, Ron, it's November."

"Can we get closer to the fire?" he asked, choosing not to acknowledge his mistake.

Clearly straining something in the effort it took not to point out that she was right, Hermione took one of his hands in hers, the wool of the gloves scratching his sensitive skin, and started edging her way through the throng. Eventually they found a spot near the bonfire amongst a couple of giggling teenage girls, two frazzled looking woman with pushchairs and a group of twenty-somethings who appeared to have been drinking. Finally feeling some of the heat wash over him, Ron stood behind Hermione and wrapped his arms around her. Straight away Hermione leant back into him, took his hands and put them into her coat pockets with hers. Ron planted a kiss of thanks on top of her hat before resting his chin on it and watching the fire consume the pile of wood beneath it.

"Explain all this to me again?" he asked with a slight frown.

"What?"

"Bonfire Night."

"Well," Hermione began, subconsciously adopting her know-it-all voice and causing Ron to smile, "four hundred years ago today, the guards at the Houses of Parliament found a man named Guy Fawkes and a lots of barrels of gunpowder in the cellar. They arrested him, thus foiling a plot to kill King James I and his government."

"Oh."

A small group of teenage boys walked in front of them, temporarily blocking part of his view of the bonfire and the girls to their right burst out laughing.

"So Guy Funks-"

"Fawkes."

"Yeah, him. He was some kind of Muggle Voldemort?"

Hermione sighed. "Most people are under the impression he was," she told him, sounding a bit exasperated, "but he was no criminal genius or explosives expert; he was just the man who was caught. He later gave up the names of the people who did the plotting but not until he had had the information tortured out of him over several days."

At the mention of torture, Ron's arms tightened around Hermione protectively and she laced her fingers through his inside of her coat pocket. It had been seven years since that night in the Malfoys' drawing room but it was still hard to think about.

"I'm guessing he was burnt at the stake for his treason?" Ron asked with a nod towards the dummy that was looking a little worse for wear now.

"Actually he was hanged, drawn and quartered."

Ron had no idea what that meant but judging by the look of distaste on Hermione's face, he probably didn't want to.

"So this is essentially the celebration of a terrorist being stopped and then executed that involves having a large fire with a dummy in it?" Ron summarised.

"And fireworks, yes," nodded Hermione. "They see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot," she added with a slight smile.

There was a small break in conversation as the crowd slowly became denser around them and the sound of a pop song reached them from the fairground rides.

"That," said Ron heavily, "is possibly the mentalist Muggle tradition I've heard of."

Hermione snorted with laughter. "Says you who always makes a big deal of Halloween."

"What's wrong with Halloween?" protested Ron.

"Nothing," replied Hermione hauntingly. "It's just that it's not like you to believe in all that rubbish about ghosts and witches." She turned her head to smirk at him.

"I happen to be quite fond of witches," he murmured into her left ear. Even with her hat on and all of her hair, the lobe was still freezing as it brushed against his lip.

"Really? _Witches_?" she quipped, one of her eyebrows disappearing into her fringe.

"I do have a favourite one though."

Ron moved his head forward so that he was inches away from her lips, the smell of her skin finally over-powering the scent of burning wood and over-priced hamburgers.

"Oh?" she breathed. "And who might that be?"

"Morgan le Fay."

Just as she giggled, Ron pressed his mouth to hers. The taste of her hot chocolate mixed with the sweetness of his toffee apple and he found himself literally hungry to kiss her. Really, he didn't need an excuse to devour her but when she tasted like this-

"EURGH! MUMMY! MUMMY, THE MAN AND THE LADY ARE K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

Ron's brain had shut down the part that registered everything that wasn't Hermione's lips so it was her that pulled away to see a girl, no older than five, tugging on her mother's coat and pointing straight at them.

"I'm sorry," the mother said, pulling her daughter's arm down gently, clearly embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it," Ron told her with a smile. "Kissing is disgusting after all," he added, looking at the little girl.

Unfazed by a stranger addressing her and still fighting to get control of her arm back, the girl frowned at Ron. "Why do it then?" she asked them.

"Well, if I don't kiss him every day," Hermione said before dropping her voice to stage whisper, "he turns back into a frog."

Ron had no idea what Hermione was talking about but it the made the little girl giggle so he nodded along. Apparently realising that Ron and Hermione weren't at all offended; the girl's mother affectionately tousled her daughter's dark hair with a heavy sigh.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked and the girl gave her a wide smile, revealing a missing front tooth. She gave Ron and Hermione a final apologetic smile before turning back to the bonfire. Ron buried his face in Hermione's neck to hide his laughter. He expected Hermione to chastise him but after a few seconds she had joined in.

When he had stopped laughing but still had a grin plastered all over his face, Ron lifted his head and looked down at Hermione who was twisting her head to look at him. For a moment they just smiled at each other, occasionally letting another chuckle escape them, but soon the humour and everything else faded into nothing as Ron found himself almost paralysed by the beauty of his wife and the way her eyes sparkled in the firelight. They were same eyes that had captured him when he was a teenager, but now they had seen so much more and it only made them more dazzling.

"Let's have one of our own," he whispered.

A slight crease formed between Hermione's eyebrows. "Sorry?"

For once, it was Ron that was patiently waiting for Hermione to catch up. He expected his heart to be hammering and his mouth to be bone dry but, in reality, he was calm as he watched her eyes widen and her bottom lip drop open slightly. He might've just asked her to put the kettle on.

Her hands tightened their grip on his and Ron could feel the hard ridge of her wedding ring through the thick wool of her glove and wetted his lip as he watched every emotion imaginable dance across the kaleidoscope of Hermione's eyes. The fear and uncertainty. Her doubts about herself and their finances. The worry that they wouldn't be able to cope or that they should focus on their careers.

He knew she would want to meticulously plan and prepare everything but, out of the corner of his eye, Ron could see the dark silhouette of the Guy and thought that planning didn't always mean you succeeded, but he knew she wouldn't appreciate him drawing parallels between this and that so he waited. Within his gaze he tried to show her that he was as ready as he could be, that he wanted this and that, above all, he wanted this with her.

There was a large explosion high above them and Ron saw the reflection of the blue and silver firework in Hermione's slightly watery eyes but neither of them broke their stare. It was soon joined by another and another, until the cold air was filled with the smell of smoke as well as the bangs, fizzes and squeals above them.

And that was when Ron saw it – the doubt fall away to the possibilities and the dreams and the future they had fought for so long ago now. It was as Hermione blinked and a single tear slipped out, that she pulled her hand out of her pocket to grasp the back of his hair, pulling Ron into a searing kiss that warmed him completely, like nothing else could.

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_Thanks for reading :)_


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